The Stargazer's War - Chapter 21

Chapter 21: Focus

“This is the last one.” Nick slid a small linen-wrapped bundle across the dinner table, more cloth than content. “If you can handle this one, you should be ready for tomorrow.”

“Thank the threads for that,” I said, swiping the package and slipping it into my pocket. “And thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Nick said. “When you’re writhing on the floor later, remember you thanked me.”

“Oh, come on. I handled the last one well enough, didn’t I?”

Nick raised an eyebrow. “Charlotte?”

“Let’s see.” She pulled up her notes. “Last time, you called him cruel, an asshole, a sick bastard, a revolutionary sadist, and the shittiest drug dealer in the known universe.”

“Okay, that last one was a joke, though,” I countered. “And I completed the cycling drills, didn’t I?”

“This one’s worse,” Nick told me. “It’s bred to hit at least as hard as the real thing, but because of variance on the single-plant level, it skews harder.” He glanced down at the half serving of grilled chicken on my plate. “If you manage to keep that down, I’ll be impressed.”

“I have to do this eventually, one way or the other,” I said. “Tomorrow’s my shot to do it as safely as possible.”

The plan was simple enough. According to Charlotte’s schedule, tomorrow I’d finally open my bone meridian. That is, I’d actually show up to my focus room hour, open my spine meridian, and then tell the sect I’d opened my bone meridian. It was a trick that’d only work the once, because there’d be no masking the muscle spasms or complete lack of consciousness my brain or muscle meridians would cause, but the spine and bone meridians looked similar enough we figured I could fool the mortal staff members.

Further on I’d have to come up with a different way to fake opening meridians on a less conspicuous timeline, but Nick was already working on that. It helped to have a drug dealer—I mean herbalist—in your back pocket.

Nonetheless, Nick’s warning turned my stomach enough that I put down my fork.

“Alright then,” Charlotte said. “Everyone ready?”

Nick nodded. I pushed myself to my feet. “Let’s do this.”

Xavier didn’t answer, his eyes fixed on the remnants of his dinner.

I sighed. The two of them had been like this all week. I still didn’t know what exactly had happened after Charlotte had feigned sleep to get Xavier to carry her home, but I knew something had. Better yet, from the way Charlotte acted entirely normally yet Xavier turned bright red and refused to so much as look at her in front of us, I could tell they’d agreed to hide whatever it was.

I found it endearing how absolutely abysmal a lier Xavier was. It pained me to acknowledge that Charlotte was probably going to hurt him. Relationships are fucky like that sometimes. But hey, with any luck, the whole process would count as overcoming adversity and he’d get a nice boost to his cultivation out of it.

At the very least, he’d learn something. Hopefully, she would too.

I kept my thoughts focused on Charlotte and Xavier as we walked together back to my room on the third floor, if only to distract myself from what I was about to do. The four of us crowded into my dorm, Xavier leaning against the wall, Charlotte sitting on the bed, and Nick kneeling in front of me as I saw crosslegged on the floor.

I unwrapped the cloth parcel to find a single leaf, deep green and about twice the size of my thumb. Its elliptic shape and firm stiffness left its rounded edges sharp, not enough to cut the skin of my finger, of course, but enough to press in rather than bending away. If I hadn’t known better, I might’ve thought he’d plucked it from any random shrub.

“It’s like the second one,” Nick explained, referencing an earlier step in my progression up the pain ladder. “Chew it, but don’t swallow. I’ll let you know when you can spit it out, okay?”

I gulped. “Let’s get this over with.”

I popped the leaf into my mouth. It tasted bitter and pungent with an unexpected sweetness that I found not entirely unpleasant, at least until I began to chew. It was tough, near leathery in its fibrousness as my teeth failed to punch through it. As I folded it over on itself with my tongue and ground away at it, I stabilized my breathing, cleared my mind of external influence, and visualized my center.

My pool of qi awaited me, calm and dark and cool comfort against the storm to come. I kept chewing.

It started slow, a faint tingling at my extremities. I kept chewing.

The sensation spread, traveling up my arms and legs into my torso. I kept chewing.

The feeling grew stronger, tingling to burning, itching to stabbing. I kept chewing.

From somewhere else, a voice reached me. “You can spit it out now.”

I kept chew—nah, I’m just kidding. I spat that shit out.

Who said I use humor as a coping mechanism?

Look, I could wax poetic about the creeping tide of agony that threatened to wash me away, about each individual nerve in my body crying out in desperate need for mercy I couldn’t give, about the way it seemed to scoop out parts of me to throw to the sharks. I could pen all sorts of similes, likening it to a firestorm, to an acid bath, to a million needles dipped in salt, but the truth is, no language spoken or dead contains the tools to truly convey the experience of total nerve pain.

It was revelatory, a glimpse at the depth of human experience even through such a narrow lens.

It was transformative, a momentary eternity of such intensity that the universe itself seemed to change before my eyes.

And by god did it fucking hurt.

The proper next step would’ve been refocus on my breathing, keep my breaths even enough to cycle through each of my open meridians one at a time.

The actual next step was to breathe at all. My throat didn’t like the idea.

I started slow, a thin thread of air that left my lungs screaming for more, but the rest of me was screaming too at the moment, so they were easy to tune out. It proved just enough to restore some flickering image of my center, just enough to run cool qi through my lung meridian.

Suddenly, that minuscule drip of precious oxygen seemed plenty.

My control solidified.

I kept my lung meridian going as one by one I cycled the others to prove I could. Next came simple qi manipulation, forming various shapes out of the liquid energy in my center, a line, a ring, a figure eight, a sculpture of Lucy, a bust of myself.

As I let that last fall away and return to the pool below, I collapsed back onto the soft carpet.

“Cal!” Xavier’s voice resounded in the tight space. “Cal, are you okay?”

“He’s not breathing.” Panic tinged Nick’s voice.

“He is,” Charlotte corrected, her tone cool and calm. “Barely, but he is. He’s cycling his lungs.” She raised her voice to address me directly. “Congratulations, Cal.”

“Fuuuuuuuu,” I replied rather eloquently given the circumstances.

“On your first attempt!” Xavier boomed. “Well done, Cal! The indomitability of your spirit will shake the stars!”

I let out a groan in thanks, long past questioning Xavier’s weirdly intense compliments. At least my position lying on the floor denied him access to my back. I didn’t think I could handle one of his back-slaps at the moment.

With dedicated focus I retreated to the infinite sea, reaching my spiritual senses past the bright cores of my friends and into the vacuum outside. The cold numbness of uncaring met me, a welcome solace in the reminder of the insignificance of my body and its pain.

I wished, for the umpteenth time, that I could’ve opened my meridian afloat in these dark waters, but fine control proved antithetical to perceiving such vastness. I found it difficult to do much of anything out here save escape the mundanities of existence. It served me well as a refuge in which to wait out the effects of Nick’s poison.

By the time I returned to the tiny island in the great dark that was the dwarf planet Fyrion, my torment had faded to a dull ache. I blinked my eyes open to meet three concerned and congratulatory looks.

I grinned up at them.

“I’m ready.”

——

The crimson glow of the Dueling Stars shined through my window as my holopad blared me awake, casting my room in sunset tones that nobody here would ever attribute to a sunset. Oh the cost of life on a planet with no atmosphere. By their place in the sky, it was midday on Fyrion. By the clock on my holopad and weight of my eyelids, it was three AM.

Excitement and anxiety worked in tandem to banish the grogginess from my mind as I shuffled out of bed and into my uniform.

The common areas of housing D sat all but abandoned, occupied exclusively by those others unlucky enough to have focus room hours so inhumanely early. I waved to Astrid—the sweet old lady who manned the reception desk for the night shift—as I passed by other bleary-eyed cultivators coming or going.

When the transport pod arrived to take me to the focus rooms, I found a man in laborer’s clothes passed out inside, the stench of alcohol wafting off him. I let him sleep.

The focus room facility itself resembled a luxury spa more than anything else. Calming music drifted softly through the air alongside incense smoke and the faint smell of lilies. Dim LEDs reminiscent of candlelight lit the expansive waiting room, the serenity of the space clashing with the busyness involved in managing the seventy plus cultivators who came and went every hour.

A teenage girl worked the reception desk at which I found myself. “Hi there,” I greeted her. “I’m Caliban Rex.”

“Caliban,” she elongated each syllable of my name as she typed into the terminal before her. “Scheduled for three-twenty-four. You can take a seat. We’ll let you know when your room is ready.”

“I’ll be opening my bone meridian today,” I lied.

She blinked at me. “Oh. Okay. One moment.” She pulled up something on her holo screen. She read aloud, “As this cultivator’s parent or guardian, do you acknowl—wait. Sorry. You obviously don’t need your parents. You said you’re opening a meridian?”

“Yep,” I cheerily confirmed.

“Okay… um… I guess…” She returned to the script, pausing as she edited out bits of it. “Do you acknowledge and accept the inherent risks of opening meridians, including but not limited to injury, permanent stunting of one’s cultivation, and death?”

“I do.”

“Great. Sign here and here.” She swiped a pair of liability waivers over to my holopad.

I signed them.

“Excellent. A technician will be by shortly to fit you for qi monitors.”

“No monitors, please.”

She blinked. “No… monitors. Okay. Um…” Her eyes darted to each side, visibly searching for a more senior staff member to deal with me. None presented themselves.

I smiled apologetically.

“Okay, let me just… oh, here it is!” She sent me another form. “Sign here to confirm you’ve been offered safety qi and vitals monitoring and chosen to forego them, aware of the inherent risks of opening meridians, including but not limited to injury, permanent stunting of one’s cultivation, and death.” She thankfully rattled off that last a bit faster than the first time.

I didn’t bother to read the waiver before I signed it.

“Perfect. Okay. You’re all set to open your…” She glanced down at the info she’d recorded. “…bone meridian. You can take a seat.”

“Thanks.” I flashed her another smile as I stepped out of the way of the toe-tappingly impatient cultivator in line behind me.

I didn’t sit. As comfortable as the plush leather armchairs seemed, I couldn’t bring myself to recline with a glass of cucumber water minutes before embarking on something as painful and dangerous as opening my spine meridian. I thought to retreat to the infinite sea to calm myself, but I needed to remain aware lest I miss when they called my name.

Instead, I made a nuisance of myself pacing around the waiting room, earning a few dirty looks from those waiting more peacefully before my holopad beeped with a message directing me to wing three. I obeyed.

“Mr. Rex?” a man with his holopad out greeted me. “Right this way.”

“Call me Cal,” I said as I followed down the long hallway to a door marked sixty-three. I stepped inside.

The focus room itself resembled an even smaller version of Lucy’s core room. Soft synthetic leather padded the floor, within which sat a drain for ease of cleaning. It had no decorations, no distractions, and only a single window that led into an observation room, no doubt where worried friends and family would wait while someone Vihaan’s age underwent the meridian cleansing process.

The staff member nodded towards it. “I’ll be in there, ready to administer medical aid should it be warranted. Since you’ve chosen to forego both qi and vital monitoring, I’ll only intervene should you call for it. Do you understand?”

“Yep.” That sounded perfect to me. The last thing I wanted was him running in to administer CPR the moment I started cycling my lungs or heart. Threads willing I wouldn’t need to cycle either of those, but you never know.

“Very well. There’s a locker there if you wish to stow your uniform, as well as a robe you can wear to the showers. Good luck.”

I bid him thanks as he adjourned to the observation room, leaving me alone in what felt a little too much like a padded cell. With a sigh I stripped down to my undergarments, tossing my clothes haphazardly into the locker before taking a seat on the floor, my back to the window. “Alright,” I muttered to myself. “Let’s do this.”

I visualized my center easily enough, finding my pool of qi exactly where I’d left it. Without further ado, I formed the familiar needle-and-thread shape, directed it to the meridian entrance at the base of my spine, and got to work.

The pain exploded through my entire body at once rather than the slow build of Nick’s various herbs, a difference I’d expected yet that startled me all the same. My focus flickered as my breath hitched, but I recovered quickly.

The sensation was different, coming in fits and starts as it chaotically leapt from the now familiar full-body agony to complete numbness and back again. I tuned it out, focusing exclusively on my breathing and the forceful flow of qi through the clogged passage. It was almost easy. Weeks of practice didn’t count for nothing.

It ended as soon as it began, abrupt and anticlimactic. For all the build-up, all the training, I’d almost expected something to go horribly wrong.

I guessed sometimes, the system worked. Don’t worry, I still had two meridians left to potentially kill myself trying to open. I may have come a long way from nearly asphyxiating in Lucy’s core room, but I still had plenty of peril waiting on the path ahead.

For now, though, I reveled in my success and experienced for the first time the sensation of cycling my spine meridian. It felt… odd.

From my reading I knew it governed pain, sensitivity to temperature, and reflexes, the latter of which I’d have a hard time testing on my own. I dug my fingernails into the palm of my right hand to test the former.

It felt… cold, like four icicles pressing into my skin, distinctly noticeable yet entirely unlike anything I’d expected. It wasn’t entirely pleasant, but it also wasn’t the screaming distraction it’d otherwise been.

In contrast, the air around me stifled like a swamp, oppressively hot and humid against my skim as every bit of heat and moisture amplified in my mind.

I cut off the flow of qi.

The world returned to normal. I sighed. It seemed the more meridians I opened, the further I distanced myself from other cultivators. I’d never heard of such oversensitivity to temperature or humidity. I prayed I’d get used to it.

The beep of my holopad tore me from my trance and into the fetid stench of the focus room. The full hour hadn’t yet passed, but they’d need extra time to clean up the mess of toxins I’d expunged. Crinkling my nose against the smell, I flashed the staff member a thumbs up and pushed myself to my feet. He smiled back through the window.

At his instruction I left my clothes where they lay and wrapped myself in the startlingly soft gray bathrobe hanging in the locker above them. Clad only in it and its pair of matching slippers, I adjourned to the showers, my spirit afloat with the glow of victory.

For all the weirdness, the unanswered questions, the unpredictable behavior of my qi as it interacted with my body, I’d taken one more crucial step on the inexorable march of progress, one critical milestone towards forming my core.

As the hot water of the shower washed over me, a single thought echoed over and over in my head, crescendoing until it manifested as a set jaw and the kind of slyly confident grin best grinned in private.

Ten down, two to go.

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